This is a really brief post to look at some of the numbers for 2018. If you haven’t seen it yet, do look at the list of 2018 MG & YA books published in the US that recently posted on Zetta Elliott’s blog. We work together at the end of each year building from my list of IPOC releases. Later, when the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison releases they’re material, we’ll search there for additional titles as well. The list that Zetta and I compile differs for the CCBC list in that it’s composed only of middle grade and young adult books. We don’t include picture books, chapter books, board books… that are meant for younger readers. That makes it difficult to align our date. 

When the CCBC details how many books are written by Blacks as opposed to how many are about Blacks, they’re looking at all children’s literature.

The numbers reflect that diversity in publishing has come to mean a presentation of black and brown people rather than giving voice to those who have traditionally been marginalized. 

I’ve parsed the numbers to look at the number of books published by Black women and much of that information was listed in a prior blog post which has been continually updated. This year, I’ve thus far identified 69 MG & YA titles. I don’t have a total number of MG and YA books to determine what percentage this is of all books published. There has been about 4500 YA books published annually, but I don’t know how many MG books there has been. If we used this conservative number of 4500 (a rough estimate based on the number of YA books previously published), we’d find that 1.53% of MG & YA books published were by Black women.

And Black men? .51%. 

I’m aware of one nonbinary Black author, that’s .0022% of books published in the US for ages 8 and above.

I’d like to break this down further to see how many of these authors have disabilities and/or are LBGT+, however this information isn’t always available. I’ll just say there aren’t nearly enough.

I’m including the list of 2018 books by Black men here. Please, let me know what’s missing.

1. Running with Lions by Julian Winters (Duet Books)
2. Fresh Ink by Lamar Giles (ed) (Random House) ages 12-17
3. Grand Theft Horse by G. Neri, illus. by Corban Wilkin(Tu Books) Ages 12–up
4. When Paul Met Artie : The Story of Simon & Garfunkel by G. Neri and David Litchfield (Candlewick) ages 9-12
5. Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles (Little Brown and Co) ages 12-18
6. The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson (Scholastic) ages 8-12
7. A Child’s Introduction to African American History: The Experiences, People, and Events That Shaped Our Country (A Child’s Introduction Series by Jabari Asim (Black Dog and Leventhal)
8. Black Panther the Young Prince by Ronald L. Smith (Disney)
9. The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic)  Ages 8-12
10. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy by Tony Medina (Penny Candy) ages 8-12
11. For Everyone by Jason Reynolds (Antheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books) Ages 12 and up
12. King Geordi the Great by Gene Gant (Harmony Ink Press)
13. A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi (Philomel Books) ages 12 and up.
14. Lost Gods by Micah Yongo (Angry Robot Books/Penguin)
15. Curveball by Derek Jeter. (Simon and Schuster) ages 8-12
16. Sunny by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum)
17. The If in Life : How to Get off the Sidelines and into the End Zone by Rashad Jennings. (Zonderkids) ages 13 and up
18. Just Mercy: A True Story of the Fight for Justice (adapted for young adults) by Bryan Stevenson (Delacorte)
19. Tight by Torrey Maldonado (Nancy Paulsen Press) ages 10 and up
20. Crown of Thunder by Tochi Onyebuchi (Razorbill/Penguin) ages 12–18
21. Lu(Track #4) by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum). Ages 10–up
22. Swing by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess(Blink/HarperCollins) Ages 13–up
23. We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson (Crown/RandomHouse) Ages 8–12